


(if i had a heart i could love you)

by temporaryforce



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1325170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporaryforce/pseuds/temporaryforce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Consider this: the Pale One, never-ending. A child, just beginning. Who, of the two, is old enough to die?</p>
            </blockquote>





	(if i had a heart i could love you)

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily edited and expanded from a year-old tumblrfic.
> 
> General warnings for canon death and canon-typical violence, written in nonexplicit and vaguely pretentious prose. Ed's character is incredibly close to my heart, and I hope at least some of this conveys that. :')
> 
> Title from Fever Ray's "If I Had a Heart".

(1)

He was there because of despair.

Dark swirls of water; the constant ebb and flow of life. That One had come. There had been song, and there had been blood, and then That One had gone. Its Choices had been made.

He did not come, but He did not go, either. His world was one of immortality, and He had only one job to do.

He was cold, and He was ruthless in the strongest sense of the word - certainly nothing like beautiful, but armed with grace in spades, like the dance of electricity in the air before disaster.

He was a killer, too - but He, unlike That One, recognized love in its purest form. He saw it, and it was enough to give Him pause. He took interest, because He saw Himself reflected back in love’s intentions; found His chill mirrored in its warmth. Love, too, ended despair. It was slow, inefficient: but it stopped His job from becoming too vast.

And so He saw it, and approved it, and moved on.

As time passed around Him, in its dirty swirls and bursts, He grew to be feared, and rightly so: for what is more fearful than the power to bring a swift ending to the mighty sadness that a burning-beating-living-beautiful heart can contain? And so He was feared, but He knew no fear: for fear ultimately leads to despair, and the ender of despair knows none.

And so He swam, and so He lived, in the ever-frozen, ever-open maw of life.

 

(2)

Ed’rashtekaresket: the sound of scraping teeth, of screaming jaws. An ironic name, as the sound of teeth had little to do with the soundless killer. It was a foil, maybe - or, more likely, a warning: Creatures, do not despair, for the silent-toothed killer brings much clamor in His wake.

 

(3)

As was fitting for a killer so pure, His role in the Twelvesong stood unchanging, blurring into His every other role; blood in the water, teeth, flesh, unceasing song. And then somewhere, somewhen in the song, there was an uptick of blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood -

The song snapped into focus, and He saw not blood, but a child. Where could the blood have been coming from, He wondered to Himself? Somewhen, there had been blood, and there had been so much of it; more than He had ever tasted in all His passing time, bitter and rich and ripping at His gut.

But it was fleeting, an imprint of a not-yet-memory - and the child. The child was real, solid, with Her hesitant strokes in the water, song unsure but with a true tune - She knew something. She knew something, and She was sure She knew, so sure; even when Her song wavered. And Ed’rashtekaresket, the sound of teeth, heard Her speak of the Heart of the Sea, and felt something within Him seize upon Her tune and sing out the same song, agonizingly exacting, note for note.

Sing, Spratling.

Not old enough to love, as yet.

 

(4)

He felt His heartsong, burning; and His heartsong tasted like blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.

He knew, in that instant, that all that blood, bitter, rich, was His: ancient blood, pumping, singing from the heart, spilling into His waters.

Old enough to die, indeed -

He had miscalculated.

Consider this: the Pale One, never-ending. A child, just beginning. Who, of the two, is old enough to die?

In the end, in that split second before He called for His own blood, He found a simple, sheerly mathematical error, and decided it required correction.

He also, in that moment, thought back to His recognition of love as slow, as inefficient. He decided that required correction, as well.

Sing, Spratling.

 

(5)

His heartsong was slow after He died.

She swayed, in the ebb and flow of water, in the dark swirls of life. That One had come. There had been song, and there had been blood, and then That One had gone.

Ed’s choices had been made.

He still sang, She knew. He was deathless, after all, in that what’s loved is deathless - in that what hunts is forever deathless. But She despaired, for She was only one life, with one burning-beating-living-beautiful heart armed with mighty sadness.

And He did not understand, for if He existed to end despair, and love existed to end despair, would not both together bring to it the most fearfully swift end of all?

He did not understand Her despair. It is not in the Master Shark’s nature to understand despair.

It is, however, in the Master Shark’s nature to learn quickly.

And when Timeheart was restored to balance under the singing waves of water, and He and She swam side by side, burning-beating-living-beautiful, He understood; and His heart sang for joy.

So did Hers.


End file.
